J-M Christmas 2013: Essential Traditions (2 of 4)

The next few days were loaded with our Christmas traditions. There are two main categories here: activity/event traditions and food traditions. The whole week of Christmas is like a double-strand twist — the activities and the food, the food and the activities, both threaded together, tightly bound, always slightly evolving and at the same time being passed down through multi-generations like treasures given and received, received and given. When I think about throwing in the towel, and just staying home for Christmas (as tempting as that sometimes is), it is the inevitable loss of the essential traditions that would go with that — some of which can really only happen in the specific place of my own roots — that keep me from veering too far off-track from our ritualistic Christmas.

The first of our major essential traditions is our trip to The Magic of Christmas concert at the Portland Symphony Orchestra. We go for lunch to Gilbert’s Chowder House in Portland, Maine, and then we all go to the symphony. I’ve written about this before (read here for example), so I won’t go on and on about it on yet again, but let me just say this: 2013 was our 33rd year going. We wouldn’t miss this for the world. And it has become the one event for which the bambinos are expected to don their gay apparel.

That night Braydon got the kids to bed at the VRBO while I stayed at my parents’ house to wrap presents. This is something that people who stay home for Christmas cannot comprehend when I talk with them about our trip away for Christmas. They always ask: “But what about the presents?” Yeah, there is that — the presents. It is a whole process. It involves purchasing almost everything online, having it shipped directly to my parents’ house, then unboxing it, organizing it, and wrapping it — all on the sly — once we’re in New Hampshire. (I am Santa to three bambinos, remember.) It is a logistical challenge that I’ve managed to pull off for the past 9 years, only because of the enormous help of my mother — who has all the wrapping supplies ready, and helps me wrap it all, then hide it all again. The downside is that we’re buying pretty much everything sight unseen. The upside is that I never step foot in a shopping mall.

The second of our major essential traditions is the entire series of events, and day-long food-fest, that is our Christmas Eve. Growing up, Christmas Eve was always the important part of Christmas — the core — for my generation, and for the generations before us. Christmas Eve still is, without a doubt, the essence of Christmas for us.

Christmas Eve morning is the pageant rehearsal at the church where we’ll all go to Christmas Eve Service that night. Kyle, Owen, and Meera are still going strong as angels in the pageant — and I’ve been told that many people in town look forward to whatever spirit/joy/antics may come from Kyle and Owen, who are known by all who attend the service every year for their very-dependable Christmas Eve spirit/joy/antics (this all started the year they were 3 years old and tried to steal baby Jesus — link to that post is here). This year they did not disappoint, and like the past couple, K & O (but Kyle especially), got way into a very spirited singing performance of Go Tell It On the Mountain. The man sitting next to me in the pew was cracking up so hard that he had all he could do to contain himself. When the pageant was over he leaned over to me and said “Thank you!” and then after the service he proceeded to explain that me that my boys bring him so much joy each Christmas Eve that his wife no longer even needs to drag him to church — he, in his words, “actually goes willingly!”

Christmas Eve afternoon is spent around a wintery campfire, roasting hot dogs and making s’mores, and drinking Swedish glogg, and eating soup in parkas and boots and hats and mittens. My parents invite friends and neighbors, and it seems like each year more and more people come. We lucked out this year with a beautiful day and enough snow to make everything icy and white.

And then is the centerpiece of our entire Christmas. The essence in and of itself: Christmas Eve Smorgasbord. My mother spends hours/days/weeks/months (literally) preparing for this. She needs to be sure to make or acquire the korv (a Swedish potato sausage that needs to be planned for weeks or even months in advance), and she makes the sill (pickled herring) weeks in advance, and she spends several days making the many varieties of cookies. There are many essential items, most very ethnically Swedish, and she is sure to have each and every one of them.

It is well known in the sociology literature on family and kinship and ethnicity that in most cultures around the world and throughout history, women — the mothers, and the grandmothers — are the passers-down-of-family-ritual. They are the keepers of culture in families. It is the mothers who ensure that the next generation carries on with the making of ethnic recipes and the eating of traditional foods at the important times of life. This is all known in the literature, and as a sociologist, I can’t help but know all of those studies and intellectual explanations. However, to know that is different than to know that. And it is at Christmas, more than any other time of the year, that I know it — really know it — from my own mother. She is the keeper of the essential traditions. It is because of MorMor that my Haitian-American son loves gravlax (cured raw salmon), and my 5-year-old daughter loves spritz (butter-sugar cookies). It is because of my mother that I can’t imagine Christmas Eve without Jansaan’s Temptation (potatoes with anchovies). It is because of my mother that I’ll always try to make sure that for as long as we possibly can we are with her for Christmas Eve Smorgasbord.

Then off to Christmas Eve service ~

And back to my parents’ house~~

Christmas Eve night we abandoned the VRBO and slept at my parents so that the kids could wake up to see if Santa had come.

And sure enough, Santa did come.

Christmas morning was a blur. It included gift-opening and Swedish-Butterhorn-eating~~

The rest of Christmas Day — and much of the time during the days that follow — is spent playing with gifts, playing with cousins, eating and drinking (even more food! MorFar makes lobster bisque and a big roast dinner; there is a steady flow of ice cream sundaes; there are smorgasbord leftovers), and taking pictures of the kids and the dogs in their pjs.